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Open Access

Armband

Artist: Unknown Celtic Primary
Date: 1200-900 BCE
12th century - 9th century BCE
Dimensions: 2.94 x 9.38 x 2.94 in. (7.46 x 23.81 x 7.46 cm)
Object Type: Jewelry
Creation Place: Europe
Medium and Support: Copper alloy
Credit Line: Lent by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, The Kurt Berliner Foundation Gift, 2000 (2000.407.1)
Accession Number: L2013.13.08
On View: Bellarmine Hall Galleries

Almost four millennia old, this object of adornment is the earliest artwork in the Fairfield University Art Museum. Likely worn by an elite member of Bronze Age society, this band is made of copper smelted with zinc, tin, or arsenic. The metal was cast in semicircular sandstone molds to create spirals, a common decorative motif in this period. The armband is engraved with a combination of cable-lines (small indented marks) and slanted markings. Its greenish-blue color is the result of exposure to oxygen. The coils may have served as protection for an archer’s forearm.




Keywords

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Celtic
Refers to the culture and styles associated with the Celts, an early Indo-European people who spread over Europe, from the British Isles and northern Spain to east of Transylvania, the Black Sea coasts, and Galatia in Anatolia, from the second millennium BCE to the first century BCE. Elements of the style persisted for centuries in southern Scandinavia and the post-Roman British Isles. It is characterized by a reference to the art of ancient Italy, Greece, and the East, combined in a new and individual style that includes a strong sense of form and structure, stylized plant, animal, and human forms, a balance of voids and ornament, vigorous vitality, and contrasts of texture.
jewelry
Ornaments such as bracelets, necklaces, and rings, of precious or semiprecious materials worn or carried on the person for adornment; also includes similar articles worn or carried for devotional or mourning purposes.
public domain
Land owned and controlled by the state or federal government. Also, the status of publications, products, and processes that are not protected under patent or copyright.

Portfolio List

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